This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison.
We're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
That's right.
Coming to you from the Stanford campus.
And while entitled opinions streams your way like starlight down the ridges of time,
our cosmos recedes in every direction,
carrying us along in its expanding body with its billions of galaxies,
its untold crush of stars, its legions of planetary spheres,
each one of which hangs there in desolate infinity,
remote and isolated, rotating, spinning,
sometimes swerving and falling, never touching any neighboring sphere,
illuminated by borrowed light, if at all,
a moat of what we call the visible universe, but only a tiny fraction of which is actually visible,
the rest of it drifting in an inscrutable sea of dark matter,
surrounded by vast eddies of dark energy,
known to us not in themselves, but only by conjecture,
because nothing makes sense without them.
Do we really want to cleanse the doors of perception and see things the way they truly are?
Oh, that way, madness lies.
And if you don't believe me, ask comrade Nietzsche.
Or better, ask Salvador Domingo Felipe Hasinto Dalí,
Premere Marquez di Pouboal.
That's right, the Dalí Savior himself.
[Music]
Beauty should be edible or not at all.
[Music]
I don't do drugs, I am drugs.
[Music]
Give me two hours a day of activity, I'll take the other 22 in dreams.
Salvador Dali read thus spoke zero through strength declared, "I can do better."
He also read the gay science, and I'm guessing he took note of section 54,
where Nietzsche writes, "The old humanity and animality, the collective primeval age,
and the past of all sentient beings, continues to meditate, love, hate, and reason in me.
I have suddenly awoke in the midst of this dream, and I must dream on in order not to perish,
just as the sleepwalker must dream on in order not to fall."
The connectedness of all branches of knowledge is the best means for maintaining the
universality of the dreaming, and thereby the continuation of the dream.
You tell him, Freddie.
[Music]
It's better to have loved and lost than do 40 pounds of laundry a week.
Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache.
[Music]
I'm guessing that Dali took note of the Nietzsche passage I quoted,
because if anyone enlisted all the branches of knowledge to continue the dream,
it was the protagonist of today's episode of entitled opinions,
Salvador Dali, painter, writer, cosmagnist, and nuclear mystic.
If my guest today is right, Nietzsche was as important for Dali as Freud was.
The guest in question, Pao Guinar, has just turned in his PhD thesis,
which goes by the title, "Overcoming Zarathustra, Salvador Dali's Rendering of Nietzsche's Uber
Mitch." We have a lot to talk about with him in the next hour,
so let's get started right away. Pao, welcome to the program.
Hello, thank you. It's an honor.
Well, I'd like to mention, first, let me congratulate you on submitting your dissertation
to the Department of Iberian and Latin American cultures here at Stanford in a week
when graduation takes place you are going to have an eminent title to your opinion,
so it's good that you're on the show. And also before we begin,
I want to mention that you actually come from the Scala,
which is a small seaside town on the Costa Brava, very close to Figuero's and Cadáquez.
So the very same region that Dali is from.
Now, whether this means you have surrealism in your blood or not, I don't know.
I did spend a week in Liscala many years ago and it seemed pretty surreal to me,
a really fantastic place. I know that Dali was particularly conscious of the debt that he owed to
the region that he was from, right? Yeah, he in fact said that he was the Cadáquez,
that he merged with the rocks and actually his house in Borgigat,
it's almost like a cell attached to the rocks, to the landscape.
And you were telling me that people from this region are a little off-center as by reputation at least
and that it's not so far fetched to say that surrealism is also in the air a little bit.
Yeah, in fact, there's an expression in Cadáquez parlatra mon tanas,
it's touched by the wind and it's an attribute of the people from that region
because there's a very strong wind and they say that they will go a little crazy, especially in the winter.
Well, okay. Now, later in the show, we can talk about Dali's connection to Nietzsche,
which you've worked on in your dissertation, but let's begin with the artistic movement that's
known as surrealism because when Antebrto expelled him from the surrealist organization in 1934,
Dali declared, "I myself am surrealism." And as far as his world reputation goes, that's not too
much of an exaggeration, I'd say, yet Dali was not the founder of surrealism, it was a movement that
he actually joined. So, would you mind saying a few words about the origins and foundational
principles of surrealism? Yeah, so Dali actually goes to Paris kind of like late in the movement.
The movement had already started in 1924 with the first surrealist manifesto that
Breton wrote. It was also already in the air, like a pollinator in 1917 had used the
adjective surrealist to describe ballet by Kubto, the name Parais, but also his own play,
the breasts of Tyresius. And they also found precursors in like 19th century artists and painters
like bookling or moorog, starmuro, afrejari, and others. And just before surrealism there was Dali
in Zurich, after the first world war, and it was a reaction to what reason had brought about,
but about horrible war, and they just saw reason as something kind of negative. So they wanted
to embrace tent and randomness and things that made no sense. So realism, that's from there,
but also at the unconscious, Freud, very important. And the first surrealist manifesto is basically
based on that. And then it starts as more of a literary movement than artists also join. And Dali,
who is in like 1924, he's only 20, he's still studying, but from the periphery in Barcelona,
there is good connections with Paris, and there are a few algalaries that bring all these artistic
movements. And Dali already sees that and kind of starts spending, sorry, artistic style,
as he still paints in a more classical style too.
Is that before he goes to Madrid to study painting formally and academically?
He goes to Madrid pretty early to the residentialist to the artists where he meets
Gartil orca and Bonuelle. So yeah, it's more or less at that time. Yeah. So you mentioned Gartil,
Lorca, he had an important friendship with him for a while. They ended up going in different directions.
How important was his relationship to Lorca in his formative period? It was actually very important.
So when Dali was a de resistanceist to the aunties, Lorca fell in love with him, Dali had a kind of
difficult childhood, especially in terms of defining his sexuality, his sexual orientation,
and then Lorca, who was openly, not openly, but he was homosexual and he actually tried to have a
relationship with Dali, started to hang out with him, went to Caracas to spend
summer with him and his family. And apparently there is where they started the relationship
where at least Dabi said that he felt he old Lorca part of his ass. And then there was something,
I mean, I don't know if you want me to go more into detail or what happened.
Well, not necessarily between them, but sexuality, which plays such a huge role in his
painting and his theory of the subconscious, so forth, he, I think his father had a great deal to do
with turning him off to sex, if not sexuality, and giving him a real fear and
loathing of the actual act of intercourse. Is that right?
Yeah, so when Dali was a child, his father, Houda Lee says that he didn't want him to do anything
better than himself, placed a book with photographers of sexual-intransmitted diseases,
Very visual graphic. Yeah, on the piano at home, and Dali saw that and his father said,
"This is what happens when you have sex." So finally that traumatized Dali from the beginning.
There were other traumas, too, like the fact that he had a younger brother who had died
and had the same name as him, so he always felt that he was a double.
That brother died just before he was born, right? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the same name as him. And apparently there was a picture also at home with his brother,
this is his brother, and he always felt very strange about that.
But all these sexual fears are what Dali uses surrealism to overcome.
Yeah. So that's when he actually started seeing the surrealist paintings and then moved to Paris.
He sees this as an opportunity to channel his fears or sublimates in a sense.
Right. And he does that through his art, that's why there are so many sexual references.
And also, a lot of references to masturbation, because that was the way he actually was able to
have sexual activity, because he had a lot of desire and it was very erotic,
but he was afraid of contact. So is it the case that throughout his whole life,
if he abstained from sexual relations with other people?
So he says that he was afraid of physical contact, but he was very erotic and he must have
read it and he did have, I think, relationship with Gala.
He must have had something with Gala, no? Yeah. So in Gala being the woman,
we'll talk about her in a moment, but the woman that he met and then idolized for the rest of his life.
Yeah. So that also leads back to surrealism. So Gala was kind of a muse among the surrealists.
She had slept with many of them. She had a three-some relationship for a while with Max Ernst and
Paul Lueart was supposed to be like the fish almost like surrealist poet.
And then when Narygos took Paris, he invites them to spend some time in Gaiquez.
And then when they go there, he meets Gala there. He explains that he covered himself in
a goat excrement to impress her. She was doing toddlers in the beach at that time in the 20s,
30s, I was like kind of outrageous. And then they meet and Gala tells him that he wants him to
kill her. They were walking by the cliffs and then she said, "I want you to kill me." And
apparently that returned Dali on for whatever reasons. And from then on, they started a relationship
and Paul Lueart goes back to Paris. They had the daughter together. Gala kind of
forget about her daughter. She was 10 years older than Dali. And that really bothers Dali's father.
So Dali's father kind of, from that moment on,
it rebulates his son and then banishes him from the family.
Especially because of Gala, he said that she was a drug addict. And there is when Dali is able to
kind of cure himself from all these sexual problems that he had had until then. And also Gala
substitutes more cars as his love.
Right. And then he moves to Paris and lives there in close contact and friendship with the
surrealist. So like 1929, when he makes a Siananalou, the surrealist movie with Nuel,
he's in Paris, then they do a lifestyle ride after. And Dali is in Paris and he's in
close contact with surrealist. He's part of the surrealist movement. He's one of the youngest.
And then he comes up with a parametrical method, which is saluted by Bredon as a great contribution
to the movement and is also inspired by like, I can't see or is on paranoia. And from that
moment on, he starts having problems with surrealist. He's almost never in tune with them.
He's always kind of in attention. And why is that?
Because he was very domestic. So realism tries to change the world through society. So
uses psychoanalysis, but psychoanalysis is seen as something individual for each person. But
surrealism tries to use that to change the world, to do a revolution, not just for
aesthetic purposes. And Dali doesn't really agree with that. Dali wants to be himself all the time.
And then there were certain presets. I mean, surrealism had a pope, had a leader, which was in
the very return. Like the ex-community guy did many people, including Dali at some point. So
Dali started doing things that they didn't like. One of them, the first one I think was
Jia Lugabra, Lugabra, which is a painting in which there is a person in the foreground with
excumance on his pants. And that's how sexual... Why did that affect that?
Why did that offend Andree Bhatta so much?
I know. I know. It's strange because even Dali says that he complains. He says,
"There's a release we're trying to be so free of...
In the visions and misconceptions. And then I started painting vaginas and excumas.
And then they scandalized. Like Victorian proves.
Yeah. But it is true. And a lot of surrealists were accused of that. There was a bourgeois movement.
A lot of them came from the bourgeois, a lot of society. And then they... When actual problems
arrived with Second World War, a lot of them also were dispersed. So it was a movement that really had
very high ideals. And then they put surrealism to the service of revolution to. So the second
and third manifestos are very political. Second one is said to be a girl in the...
They're very Marxist, actually. Third one is Marxist, yeah. And even Communist party
affiliated. What's interesting is that then even the communists, they were questioning
Breton. And they're talking about what's the use of this. We actually need
like solid chains in society, not like some paintings and stuff like that. We need to do a revolution
like, "Oh, you're going to help." Because it's really starting to think about this very different
than socially start. Oh, yeah. They were doing in Russia. So yeah, these excrements and vaginas,
there were things that bothered us really, but didn't provoke a break. What brought the break was
that Lee's representations of Hitler. He was obsessed with his thighs. He's back. So he
said that he loved painting Hitler because of aesthetic reasons basically. And he's decadence.
And then he had this theory that Hitler provoked the second warboard just to watch it and masturbate
by losing it because he was a masochist. And these all has to do with the
financial critical method, which is this hyper rational way of looking at reality, having some crazy
ideas, but then putting them to work until actually makes sense, until everything makes sense.
Yeah, I have a hard time getting a grasp of what the paranoid critical method actually
is all about. And I'm not even sure Salvador, that he ultimately clarifies it in a way that is
completely stable, but you want to give a shot at just synthetically saying what on earth the
paranoid critical method is. So yeah, I mean, you have a problem with it. I have a problem with it.
So first I'm going to say the more anecdotal things so that you get an idea of how this was not
really a solid method at least. He said that he never really understood how it worked. He only
knew that it gave good results. That was one thing. And then he also said that it only worked
if you were married to Gala, to his wife, because he said that in order to be able to use a
pan-anchorical method, you have to dive into madness. You have to be mad and be
in the functional unit. Someone who's an anchor to reality. And Gala, if she was something
was that, the person who provided for Dali who took care of the everyday staff, Dali would have
probably not been able to survive by himself. So that's what he loved her so much.
Yeah, basically. So it's a kind of lucid madness, or there's a method to the madness if you like.
I think there's a quote I had a bunch to choose from in my intro.
Yeah, I have a few to do with that. I've said the only difference, the only difference between me
and a madman is that I am not mad. Yeah. Maybe that's part of the method.
Yeah, that's part of the method. Then we can go back to that when we talk about Niteh.
Yes. That we fried himself a lot by the fact that he didn't go mad. And he says,
I was better than Niteh because I actually didn't go mad.
But it's a big triumph for him. I think not to have gone mad because the more I looked into him,
the more it seemed to me like madness was a probability.
So not only that, he had antecedents in his family. So his mother apparently,
who died when he was only 16, was already losing her mind. And his grandfather jumped from a balcony
because of paranoia. So there were people in his family that died mad. And again,
if we talk about the importer and the wind and these people that died mad because of the wind,
even more probability. But when back to the paranoia critical method,
he used it also as a way of putting his madness to work. So by using the paranoia critical
method, he gave free rein to his madness. But in an almost rational way. And it was a way of
balancing the surrealist because the surrealist were all about automatic writings,
stream of consciousness. Massorn, for example, was like just throwing sand on blue and see what
happens. And he was all like random. And then the leader liked that. He was extremely rational.
He was extremely rational. Okay, but also extremely rational. So the paranoia critical method
was a way of letting chance to each work or diving into the subconscious. But then at the same time,
making it extremely rational and created a theory of your own madness. So there are different
definitions. So like I'm says that the paranoia, have their paranoia already inside their
minds and they project it on reality. So nothing on reality contains that. And there
were done, for example, was very impressed by one of the people that he treated in the First World
War because he worked there as a doctor, as a psychiatrist. And there was one of his patients
thought that the whole world was staged. It was all theater. So that would be a representation of
the paranoia critical method of this idea of just throwing reason on reality and just making sense of
things, even though they may not make sense. And then Rem Kulkas, the architect, has also defined
it as like cheating at solid air. So when things start to not make sense, it just cheat a little
bit and make them work or forcing a piece on a puzzle, for example. So the leader was aware that
the paranoia critical method was not a hard science method or anything like that. It was a
serious science. But it was very for that. Was painting a form of engaging in the method? And if so,
was it a descent into the subconscious in a way that allowed the contents of the subconscious to
come out in all their disordered modalities and yet the art would provide what we might call the
Apollonian framework within which these tiny, zian elements could actually see the light of day without
self imploding. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's how he finds actually. So this is a
Apollonian there, an Asian dichotomy. And then he sees the method also as the developing liquid,
like a photography, like there's like the subconscious there. And then you need the
paniacarical method to make the subconscious take shape and turn it into art. And that's why he
insisted so much in knowing the classical techniques of painting because he wanted to represent us
of countries like a photography, actually take pictures of the subconscious. And he
he says two things. He says, I want to conquer the irrational by doing that. He also says I want to
be the nature of the irrational. So that's why he is, he insists so much on being a good painter too.
So here's a question I'm very curious about was Dali, an artist of inspiration.
In other words, he would let things come to him or was he an artist who superimposed images and
allegories and symbols onto the canvas, the kind of surrealist canvas that he was working on?
So I think Dali would say that he's both because he always saw himself as an integrator. So he would say that
he has both inspiration and like this capacity for juxtaposing element. And I think here it's important
to say that he considered himself not a painter. He said he was a cosmoganist. So he had a whole
theory of the cosmos and how things work and he applied that to painting and then he's known as
a painter. But he always said that he was a better writer than painter. He did movies, he did plays,
he did ballet, he did TV, he did everything. And there's actually an anecdote. There's a
TV program I think is what's my line, like an old American TV program. You can just look at that
on YouTube. And they try to figure out who is the person that they can't see. That program is a
bunch of people that are trying to figure out who they're talking to. And then they say,
are you a painter, are you a musician, are you a writer? And he says yes to everything.
Yeah. And then they really don't know who he is. And they end up knowing who he is because of the
moustache. But you know, that's one reason that I quoted the passage from the gay science in my intro
where Nietzsche says the connectedness of all branches of knowledge is the best means for
maintaining the universality of the dream. I'm very impressed by Delhi's engagement with the sciences
and also psychoanalysis and other branches of knowledge. But it seems that his career at
different stages is marked by an active engagement with, for example,
Einstein's theory of general relativity when you have the persistence, the famous
paintings of the clocks, the melting clocks and things. There's clearly a very learned
invocation of theories of time, relative time in that we've talked about Freud, psychoanalysis.
Cosmogony, when after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he got very
involved in quantum mechanics, he declared himself a nuclear mystic, nuclear mysticism, the atomic thing.
And so Cosmogony, this is an artist who was very well informed about the different branches of
knowledge of his own time and very important for his artwork. Visual as well as writing, I'm
presuming. I'm more familiar obviously with the paintings I haven't read him, but how well did he
know the sciences of his time? More than the average person, he talked to actual scientists and
obviously he didn't know as much, but they were usually impressed. The melting clock is maybe the
most prominent example of his application of the theory of relativity of time and energy on a
painting, because it's a time melting. I was inspired by a common bird cheese, actually. But then
yeah, after the 40s he turns into this nuclear mysticism theory and then by the end of his life,
he's really interested in science and he even has a conference in Figaras when he's
almost like about today. He paid first class tickets to some of the best scientists in the world,
to go to his museum and talk about whether there was tens or not in physics, whether it was
right or not, whether we can actually uncertainty and yeah, and they didn't agree, actually.
He also meets Freud in person now, draws a portrait of Freud, who was his hero now, as much as Nietzsche
or even more. I don't know, I mean he talks about both. He had a competitive relationship to
Nietzsche, I mean that's what my whole research lesson is about and that's consistent throughout
his life, he always saw Nietzsche as a competitor, someone that he wanted to do better than he was
also comparing his moosters to his moosters, with many different because Nietzsche's moosters was
depressive, he said, like Prost, also melancholic and then his moosters was vertical and
Dionysian. With Freud, he saw him as an inspiration, but with Freud, so I would say he used
Freud to heal himself because of all his sexual problems. Do you ever undergo psychoanalysis?
Not that I know of. So he was Freud by reading him and studying him. He read the
interpretation of dreams and then he was very inspired by the fact that he could tackle all these
problems, he could submit them and he could make something good out of them. So one of the things
I found out in his past words, the other man, which he declares himself to be in the 70s, he
openly says I've become the other man, which is an exaggeration of course. He says he is the
Freudian hero. Freudian hero meaning that he put together all these complexities that he had,
he had many, frustration, complexity, and complexity in the most complex.
What happened?
Narcissism. Narcissism, that's huge. He said he's a masochism, he then even
invents anyone who is a clever reason, which we can talk about to a view one.
But he puts them together and he accumulates them and that's the key part to me,
it's different. And that's maybe why he wasn't interested in doing psychoanalysis himself because
he didn't feel he had to heal. He felt like he could just accumulate them, put them all together
and make art out of it. And in fact, one of your main chapters is called accumulation, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's exactly what I talk about there. His capacity to make a work of art of his life
by accumulation and affirmation. And that's also what the panarchical method is,
it's affirmation. It's imposing your paranoia on reality, imposing your perspective,
and making others participate in it too.
That's very neat, Jin. You know, affirmation of your own values, in position of values, yeah.
And another thing that connects into Nitsis, obviously the fact that he was beyond good and evil.
And he's a very questionable figure. I never tried to defend him, of course.
Very controversial. You're speaking about politically now.
Politically, yeah. Or more a leader.
Well, let's open this parentheses if it's a parentheses about the political, because otherwise,
I'm afraid that they might just fall by the wayside and I don't. So what was most controversial?
He can't. Conservative is not the right word. You cannot say that South of other Delhi was
conservative in any traditional sense of the term. And yet, he was certainly not revolutionary
in the way that Andrzebe Ptoff and the Communist Party would have wanted.
No. So he was extreme. He was extremist. I would define him as both Monarkeek and Anakis.
Like he was both. But he was definitely in favor of order. He said that nature was Monarkeek.
Monarkeek. That wouldn't make him fastest or anything like that. But also, he went back to Spain
after the civil war and he lived under Franco and he prayed Franco and did all sorts of controversial
things. But many people have said that he did that also because that gave him the most freedom.
Because in an dictatorship, he actually could have more freedom than in a democracy.
Because if he was in favor of the regime, they just let him do whatever he wanted.
Where he lived in Káicáes. They assumed he was kind of half crazy. Let him be.
Yeah. As long as he doesn't complain about us. So he had all sorts of orages and whatever he wanted to do there.
And at the same time, he made fun of Franco, though. Like, even to his face.
They wanted to conduct or at him and he said that he would only accept that if Franco,
himself, put the medal on his skin. He wanted to bleed. Another anecdote that showed that he was
just making fun of everyone. But I would say that, and that's why Nietzsche is so important to
understand that, too, because Nietzsche in Spain had a huge influence. The turn of the century,
because Spain had lost the colonies in 1898 and then they needed energy. They said that the
problem of the nation was the Abulia, which is like the lack of energy or like will.
So Nietzsche was seen as this possibility for a new energy. And it was both the anarchists and the
fascists that eventually were more inspired by Nietzsche. It was like the opposite. But it was
his individualism that really inspired them. So I would say that Lee, if he was something,
he wasn't in the Middle East. And that's one of the reasons why he didn't have a good relationship
with the surrealists, because the rhears were more of like the group, trying to create a movement that
would make a revolution that caught the coordinated effort.
Would you call him a dandy? Yeah, probably, yeah.
Yeah. As defined by Bodle, someone who would even sleep in front of a mirror or have a mirror in
this mind when you slept in this, you know. Yeah, I mean, he was more than that, though. I
wouldn't say he was just a dandy. Because the dandy I associate with some of who kind of
leaves for the aesthetics without really having like much maybe content or like anything to say.
He had plenty to say, but he was very aware of his image. And especially the mustard, I think,
I always go back to the mustard, because it really represents him. And he said that, too.
He said that actually the mustard. He used the mustard too to hide himself. But it was a representation
of how he was aware that he was always wearing a mask. And that people would never really understand
how he thought that they would be able to understand the mask. And he was constantly changing masks.
And that's why he was probably struggling with madness, because when you become the mask,
and you just keep changing masks, then you don't know who you are. I can bear in mind,
this movie, like persona, for example, which means mask. You can get very confused. And I think
that where Gala actually was very important anchor, you see, reminded him all the time.
Yeah, of the concrete realities. Who he was, and the fact that he was a genius. That was
huge anxiety that he had. He thought he was a genius, since he was a child. In the
diary of 1920, which is a diary that he didn't write to publish, he was only 16, he says that. He says,
"I am a genius. I'm going to be a genius. The world will see me as a genius." And at that time,
he was not, he was nothing. And then in secret life, his autobiography from 1942,
it's all covered with a question. I am a genius. I am a genius. He's always struggling with that.
And then in 1962, I think he published a diary, which is called the Diary of a Genius.
So in a sense, also, I think it's important to see this sort of niche idea of
lying to yourself, projecting yourself towards the future, so that you can redeem yourself.
So if he saw himself as a genius, then he became a genius.
And that's also this idea of a paradigm of critical. If you project it on reality,
then you turn the reality into that.
Well, he must have done a good job of that, because he was and probably still is considered a genius.
I mean, he almost represents that idea.
Right. And do you think he was a genius?
It depends on how you define the word. Yeah, I mean, in conventional terms, yeah, it would say he was.
I don't know, actually, I'm completely naive or ignorant about where he stands
in terms of the estimation of the art critics and the art world.
I don't know if his paintings are. He has worked the way to the lot.
He has fluctuated. So his stock is going up and down.
I think recently it was going up, though.
It was going up. Yeah.
Because it could not have been higher. I can't imagine any artist having a higher,
let's say stock price in the 60s and 70s and not South of El D'Alina.
I mean, so after the 40s, he became
questionable in many ways. A lot of artists despise him because of Franco,
like when not being engaged.
And then, especially Spanish artists, actually.
And then he did a lot of publicity and paintings that were not that good just to make money.
So he loved money, I was listening.
And he had this idea of, he saw himself almost as an alchemist,
someone who learned bio matter into gold. So what I was doing was out.
And some of his paintings were really good, technically very skilled.
Some others were just money.
So you said that after the 40s, what about his atomic period?
Because that begins after the war, no?
And that is pretty serious stuff some of it, anyway, no?
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also, really, the technique becomes better, actually.
And the technique is not, it's not cubistic. I mean,
cubism was different, but it has some parallels or associations with cubism.
I guess Picasso was important for him as an influence, huh?
Yeah, he was one of the father figures.
It was like he had three, he had these father, he was the broiler,
worse one, or the move, the hardest one, and Bretton and Picasso.
And Picasso, he admired because it was a great bender, actually.
He was also, technically, he was older and he was in Paris and he was already
considered a genius to...
Yeah, actually.
And the way Picasso breaks up the integrity of a form
into the cubistic, not method, but the cubistic style.
That at least atomic art, you find that he is responding to quantum mechanics
and the idea that most of an atom is made up of empty space.
And that what we take to be the substantial material realities are not that at all.
There's just a gap huge abyss that inhabit the very things that we take to be stable objects.
And when you see his atomic paintings, he has transfigured that into an aesthetic,
so it's really quite compelling.
Yeah?
So I think in that sense, he would have loved to do a cubism or some sort of
new style and maybe that's what he was trying with his atomic mystic period.
Which is also, if you see, like, there's the atomic, but there's also the mystic,
which is again, like, streams.
There's nothing more different, actually.
Physics, and then mysticism.
So even that, he played with because he was impressed by the
the same time, soon after he started dividing the world, not in atoms, but in rhinoceros horns.
You can see how this idea that everything was divided into rhinoceros horns,
there's a lot of painting, like torso by filias.
Or then he even went to the Paris Zoo and painted a version of the Lacemaker by Bermer,
who he revered, divided the rhinoceros horns.
So that was again another example of the Parinec critical method.
So he was like, from now on, rhinoceros horns, and everything is rhinoceros horns,
and I did my everything in rhinoceros horns, and it actually worked.
He applied that to Millets, Angelus, the painting,
where he said that there was really an eration for the dead child.
Then he asked the Luvre to do an x-ray of the painting, and there was a dark mark there.
So he said, "That's what I said."
He said, "The dead side of there."
And then he had a period with bread, too.
And then he said that everything was bread, and everything had to do with bread,
and from now on, everything is bread, and he had bread in all his ballets,
and bread, hats, and stuff like that.
Is that what he meant by Cosmogony, that I'm a Cosmogony,
that I could see the universe as rhinoceros horns or bread or something?
Yeah, that's exactly it.
So like a pre-socratic philosopher who would see fire or water or whatever.
He also had that dimension.
Well, if affirmation, basically, if information of his own madness,
because these were things that he was aware that made no sense.
Accumulation, affirmation, you have a third chapter called generosity.
What was his generosity?
So that was the most talented part of my dissertation,
because it's not generosity in the normal sense of the word.
Yeah, because I remember in Puduela, I write some for some money,
lending, and there's this letter where he gives all these surreal explanations
for why he will not give him any money.
Yeah, one of them is quoting Nite actually.
He quotes Nite and Marquis de Sade, which they both liked.
Because in last door, the final scene is that Marquis de Sade,
they were both of Nite and Marquis de Sade and all these stuff,
but then Dali went with it and Buduela became an engaged artist who was communist too.
So Dali actually, I think, brought it to the final consequences,
and he was Nitian, the final consequences.
But when Nite talked about generosity,
he talks about generating by focusing on oneself.
That's the whole theory about Christianity, though.
If you try to just give give, then there's nothing that you can give.
I see Dali in the same sense.
Dali focuses a lot on himself.
It's very egocentric, but then he generates a lot,
he produces a lot, not for altruistic reasons.
It's not that he wants to help anyone, but he ends up giving,
and he gave a lot to forget us, though.
If he get us, he's birthplace, if you go there, it's Dali city almost right now.
And he said ironically that he would pee,
like he said, the reign of Danai,
which was kind of peeing on his city,
this idea of also returning, experimenting to gold.
So I'm going to pee a reign of gold in my city,
through my museum, and everything I will leave there.
But he didn't do it for, he wasn't trying to be generous,
or altruistic, he was just trying to feed himself.
So that's the generosity that I talk about, and I don't know.
It's not very orthodox, but I think it works in Nitian terms,
because Nitian does talk a lot about the right giving,
the good way of giving, and it's not that I think when he was here,
he also talked about that.
On this radio show, you mean?
You'll gospel.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And of course, and the self-utilidizing that you get in Nitian,
this first kind of self-promoter,
I think Dali learned that lesson from Nitian about how to be market himself.
Very well. I think he actually surpassed Nitian in that aspect.
And I think that's also what he considers himself a better at doing than Nitian,
because Nitian, his wife was weak.
So he saw him as someone who wasn't able to affirm himself enough,
and I leave really, when the final consequences and really created his persona.
He was also a buffoon, like Nitian, he's himself as a buffoon,
like the product of the second edition of the gay science when he says that,
from now on, I'm going to do a parody.
Parodia.
Yeah, in Kippit Parodia.
So in Dali, you see that, too.
In Dali, I would say probably in Nitian, for Dito, with his secret life,
his autobiography, which he presents himself in the American audience,
he does that. He starts becoming this kind of buffoon,
and takes himself seriously, but not really.
But at the same time, he says it is essential for him to create this ambiguity for people.
And that's what you probably ask me,
was he serious about his science or not?
He didn't want people to know that well.
And then he also says, "I don't want to know either.
I don't know where is the limit of where I'm serious,
and serious philosopher and I'm right, and where I'm just being a clown."
Well, you could say that this is the gay science in aesthetic terms.
When Nietzsche says that the first imperative is cheerfulness and whatever
gayity means in this different kind of liberated knowledge that Nietzsche was promoting,
there was a certain gay science at work in his buffoonery,
which also had a serious aspect, but he's had a playful aspect.
Unfortunately, nothing of which has been learned by our current president
as we speak who has all the self-eulogizing tendencies of
the Megalomania narcissism, and yet,
has a buffoonery of which he is not quite aware,
and that he doesn't play with, but he takes seriously.
So it makes it even more pathetic.
But anyway, that I close that parentheses.
Towards the end of his life, he gets in no bold, no?
Like, I read his title at the beginning. He loved that.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, he was extremely heavy.
He's made the mickey of Pupul, which is a castle that he had bought for Gala,
because of course Gala had lovers throughout her life,
and Dali had her his own kind of partners,
many of whom were actually ambiguous.
Amanda Liev, for example, was a man, there were others.
And a lot of these were voyeuristic sessions more than.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He never really wanted to touch much.
But at the end of his life, Gala started to have too many lovers
or something like he was uncomfortable, so he bought her a castle.
In the Bijon Pura which is 40 miles away from Cara Caz.
And this is Panderlot of Time there, and she had her lovers there.
And then she's actually buried there.
There's a controversy because Dali was supposed to be buried there,
but then he ended up being buried in his birthday, in birthplace in Figuero's.
And that whole castle was kind of a homage to Bagnare and lit big the second,
and his decadence of madness, also, the Mad King.
And then when Gala died, Dali moved there,
and when Dali was very old, that's when the King of Spain decided to make him the Marquis of that castle, of full wall.
He was very rooted in his region, right, Pao.
And in that sense, did he have any Catalan independence
kind of streak in him or was he more of the monarchic, you know, Spain as a unified
under the crown? So he got both. He got both.
It's completely... I mean, he was buried in Monarque, as for sure.
And he was also very Catalan.
In many ways, he always claimed that he's Catalan-arite, that he said that he was
the heir of Ramon Glue and the Catalan tradition of philosophers,
Francesca Símanes and even Puzol, also, contemporary philosophers.
Who actually really liked to say that when the Catalan's traveled throughout the world,
they would have everything paid for.
Which is this self-arlicizing tendency that Dali loved.
And of course, if he was Catalan, he got to say that being Catalan was the most important thing
because that made him the best.
And I think that's something that's also emphasises, which is
self-eology through the group.
I think my group is the best, therefore I am part of the group, therefore I am the best.
So he was also Spanish.
So he also used the Spanish mystics as an inspiration and he also put himself there.
Yeah, very good. So the Spanish mystics bring up his relation to mysticism,
where he speaks about a nuclear mysticism.
And he may not have been particularly religious, yet he was
seemed to be quite committed to Catholicism if only as a series of rituals,
sacraments, sacraments, performances.
Where does he stand in terms of his religious sentimentality?
So I would say similarly to Monarchy, he was more gnarctic,
but he wasn't necessarily in favour of like a certain king, actually.
He was as gnarctic as he was anarchist.
So in religion, I think he was also catholic,
but he didn't really believe.
He was more like he loved the ritual, he loved the paraphernalia.
He got married to Gala twice, actually, because he said something that is useless
and that is ritual and I need that.
That's for me.
Which was also a way I think to affirm his choices.
For a while, he was also doubting whether he made a good decision or not,
being with Gala.
Then he made it good by affirming it.
But towards the end of his life, he did not seem to suffer from any sense of
worries about his afterlife.
He wanted to be frozen.
He wanted to be frozen like this name, who he actually was friends with.
He said on an American television program, I don't know if it was a dick-cavit show
or 60 minutes, that I do not believe in my own death.
Yeah, so that also goes back to his childhood.
His mother dying when he was 16 from breast cancer,
and then his brother, who had the same name as him.
So when his mother died, he loved very much.
He promised himself that he wouldn't die.
And the way he does that is by being a genius.
He says, "I won't die because I will be a genius.
My name will be remembered forever."
Which is kind of true, because we're talking about him now.
But that was his way of overcoming that.
But that is a very important part of his cosmagnity.
When he talks about the phoenixology,
which is also like sealed of science that he comes up with,
part of his cosmagnity,
which is the science of dying,
and the science of dying, and then being reborn, being reborn,
stronger, and more convinced of who he was.
So that was always part of his life.
Nietzsche also had that same kind of fixation when he went mad
that he was going to be reborn as the dying god,
Dionysus being reborn.
I don't think he really thought about that.
He knew he was going to die.
But he wasn't frozen, but he was a mommy fight.
And they actually examined his corpse a year ago,
because there was this woman who said that he was...
He looked good, finally.
He was most of his still up.
The claim was false, though, right?
Yeah.
So, power in the last few minutes that we have left,
your dissertation on Nietzsche,
I don't know what it will most likely become a book
in one form or another.
Is this an important part of Dali's...
I don't call Dali's studies, but is it an under-thematized aspect of his career?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I read the dissertation, and I think it's essential,
actually, to understand Dali,
because as you said at the beginning,
Freud is very present, but Nietzsche is actually not...
I mean, Norway has really talked about Nietzsche's influence on Dali.
And I think it's very important because Dali has been...
I wouldn't say misjudged, but like...
He has been easily condemned as a fascist,
or someone who was okay with Franco,
or someone who had no morals.
Ian Gibson, who has a really good autobiography
about Dali, he gives him of that.
So, I think it's important to at least put Nietzsche in the equation,
so that we can understand that he had at least a theory behind that.
He was not just a bad person.
Right.
He maybe or not, but was Nietzsche a bad person?
He's the overman a bad person.
Yes, I mean, in moral terms, in conventional moral terms, yes.
But when you're beyond good and evil, that not so much,
and then, that's why I thought the generosity chapter was important,
because he generated thought.
So, it needs a lot of energy.
So, I see them both as radioactive material,
something that can give energy,
but it can also destroy atomic bomb, or like drugs, like a pharma con,
which is both poison and remedy.
So, the right amount, they can be very stimulating.
Well, that's great.
Good luck with that, and we look forward to that publication of that book whenever it's ready.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
Definitely learned a lot, and I want to tell our listeners
we've been speaking here with Paul Guñar, who is now a doctor in our department of
I-LAC, namely Iberian, Latin American Cultural Studies, and thanks for coming on-pow.
And I'm going to leave us with a song from an album called "Surrealistic Pillow."
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
[Music]